Scenes of Reading

William Baker

This complex and well-written study utilizes contemporary feminist critical theories to explore works by George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, and Virginia Woolf. Utilizing material as diverse as the history of witchcraft and physiology, Dr. Cervetti analyses the reading experiences of her chosen authors to show the ways they were able to challenge and transform reductive views of women. Drawing upon George Eliot's early reading and particularly Eliot's use of DeFoe's The History of the Devil and Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, Cervetti illuminates The Mill on the Floss, and specifically the role of Maggie Tulliver in the novel. In the final chapters, Cervetti draws upon diverse discourses such as those of S. Weir Mitchell and The British Medical Journal and the eugenics theories of Dr. T. B. Hyslop in order to illuminate Virginia Woolf and her writing. Cervetti brings Woolf's prolific reading effectively to bear upon Orlando, and in so doing adds substantially to our understanding of the work. In short, Cervetti's is an illuminating work, not least because of the eclectic nature of the material she brings to bear upon the three authors and their novels.--William Baker, Northern Illinois University

Booknews

Combines biography, literature, and cultural and feminist theory to examine the radical critiques of patriarchy performed in , and . The author focuses on how these novels revise the romance plot, abandoning this ancient and very political story line and creating in its place a much larger imaginary field in which female heroines as well as their readers can consider and experiment with other possibilities. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.